Key Takeaways
- A Meldezettel registration is not planning permission: registration law and zoning law are separate systems.
- Tyrol blocks new holiday-home creation on any of three separate grounds, of which the 8% stock cap is only one.
- Renovating a grandfathered Tyrolean holiday home past 25% can extinguish its lawful leisure-use status.
- Salzburg's official list, dated 15 August 2025, records 91 of its 119 municipalities as restricted, plus nine mapped restriction areas.
- Austria has no single second-home rule: the provinces run genuinely different mechanisms.
- New lawful holiday-home creation is frozen across Tyrol's premier resorts, so buyers compete for a fixed pool of grandfathered resale stock.
The Zoning Trap: Why a Completed Purchase Doesn't Guarantee Holiday Use
Completing an Austrian purchase and being allowed to use the property as a holiday home are two separate questions, decided under two separate bodies of law and by two separate authorities. Clearing one does not settle the other: registering an address confers no planning permission, and authorities routinely cross-check registration, property and consumption records afterwards when they investigate how a property is really being used.
If you are still at the orientation stage, Buying Ski Property in Austria for UK Non-Residents 2026 covers foreign-buyer eligibility, the province-by-province strictness picture at a glance, and the cost stack. This article works the layer below that: the statutes themselves, province by province.
The land-transfer permit that some Austrian purchases require (the Grundverkehr approval) settles whether you may acquire the property at all. It is silent on the use that the property's zoning and its municipal register entry actually permit.
Registering a secondary address is equally silent. A Nebenwohnsitz registration, evidenced by the Meldezettel slip issued by the local registration office, is a reporting duty under the Meldegesetz, Austria's registration act. It carries no planning-law weight and grants no permission to use the property for holidays.
The planning-law terms are the ones that decide the question. Tyrol and Carinthia use Freizeitwohnsitz (leisure residence) for a property used only temporarily for holidays or recreation. Salzburg and Styria use Zweitwohnsitz or Zweitwohnung (second home) for the same idea, and both regimes turn on whether the property is instead a Hauptwohnsitz, a primary residence at the centre of the owner's life relations.
For a plain-English introduction to what Freizeitwohnsitz status is and why it matters to UK buyers, see Why Ski Property Purchases Fall Through. What follows here is the statutory detail underneath that definition.
Important
This is a briefing on how the provincial regimes work, not legal advice on any specific property. Whether a particular flat or chalet carries lawful leisure-use status, and whether it can keep it, turns on its own register entry, its zoning and its permit history.
Have the position for the exact property and municipality confirmed in writing by your own Austrian lawyer before you commit to anything.
Tyrol: The 8% Cap and the Reserve-Municipality Freeze
Tyrol runs its restriction through two acts at once, a planning act and a land-transfer act. The planning act is the Tiroler Raumordnungsgesetz 2022 (TROG 2022), whose §13 Abs 1 defines a Freizeitwohnsitz as a building or flat used during holidays, weekends, or otherwise only temporarily for recreation, and not serving a year-round housing need tied to the centre of the person's life relations. Abs 3 then governs which of those residences may lawfully be used as one.
Abs 5 is where creation stops. It sets out three separate grounds, and any one of them on its own bars a municipality from permitting further Freizeitwohnsitz creation in its zoning plan.1
The first ground is the numeric ceiling. Once the registered Freizeitwohnsitze on a municipality's §14 register, plus any further units already earmarked for creation under its zoning plan, exceed 8% ("8 v. H.") of its total housing stock at the most recent building-and-housing census, no more may be permitted.1 The second ground is a land reservation for subsidised housing in the municipality's local spatial planning concept.
The third ground is designation as a Vorbehaltsgemeinde (reserve municipality), and that designation comes from a different act altogether. It is made by ordinance of the provincial government under §14 of the Tiroler Grundverkehrsgesetz 1996 (TGVG 1996), Tyrol's land-transfer act, and there are two routes to it.2
Crossing the 8% share makes designation mandatory under §14 Abs 2 lit b. Separately, §14 Abs 1 lets the provincial government designate a municipality on general housing-market pressure, assessed through its secondary-residence quota, its average land price against the provincial average and its reserves of buildable land. That second route makes no reference to the 8% figure at all, so a municipality can be designated without ever approaching the cap.2
The Vorbehaltsgemeinde ground is the newest of the three. A 2023 amendment, in force from 1 September 2023, inserted it at §13 Abs 5 lit c, so a designation made under the land-transfer act now also triggers the planning-law freeze. In practical terms, that all but closes the door to new lawful holiday-home stock in the municipalities concerned.
The current list runs to 181 municipalities. The listing ordinance, the Vorbehaltsgemeindenverordnung 2026, was published in Tyrol's provincial law gazette (Landesgesetzblatt, LGBl; every province publishes a separate one) at LGBl 100/2025 and took effect on 1 January 2026.2 Press reporting put the count at roughly 142 in 2022 and 148 in 2024, so the freeze now covers a steadily larger share of the province.
The designated municipalities include virtually every premier ski resort in Tyrol. Kitzbühel, Ischgl, Obergurgl, Fieberbrunn, Seefeld and Zell am Ziller are all covered, and both St Anton am Arlberg, in the Landeck district, and Sölden, in the Imst district, appear on the current list.
The gap between the 8% ceiling and actual stock can be wide. The province publishes a municipality-by-municipality register, current at 28 May 2026, which records 1,274 registered Freizeitwohnsitze in Kitzbühel against 7,681 dwellings, a share of 16.4%; 368 in St Anton am Arlberg, 19.3%; and 293 in Brixen im Thale, 14.8%.3 The cap does not unwind stock already registered: it stops more being created.
The same register shows why designation cannot be read off that percentage. Sölden holds 10 registered Freizeitwohnsitze against 2,013 dwellings, a share of 0.5%, and is a designated Vorbehaltsgemeinde all the same.3 Much of its tourist accommodation is likely to sit in the commercial categories §13 Abs 1 excludes, such as licensed guesthouses and registered holiday flats, which never reach the Freizeitwohnsitz register.
Designations are made and amended by ordinance, so a municipality's status can change. Confirm the current designation for the specific municipality with your Austrian lawyer before you rely on it.
Tyrol: Grandfathering, the 25% Extinguishment Trap, and the Heir's Exception
Because new creation is frozen, almost every lawful Tyrolean holiday home on the market is a grandfathered one. Under §13 Abs 3 a property qualifies on one of two routes. The first is registration as a Freizeitwohnsitz between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1998, together with a formal determination by the municipality, the Feststellung, confirming that the use was lawful.1
The second route is narrower: a building permit granted under §4 Abs 1 of Tyrol's 1994 act on the exceptional admissibility of buildings in open land (Freiland), LGBl 11/1994.1 Long use before 1994 is not itself a qualifying route. Use that was already lawful on 31 December 1993 works as a defence against the offence of unlawful use under §13a, which is a separate question from whether the property holds Freizeitwohnsitz status.
The constraint bites when the new owner starts building work. TROG 2022 §15 Abs 2 and 3 caps any rebuild or extension of a grandfathered Freizeitwohnsitz at no more than 25% ("25 v. H.") growth in either Baumasse (building volume) or Wohnnutzfläche (habitable floor area), measured against the originally lawful structure.4
If a building permit is then granted for works that exceed that 25% line, §16 Abs 1 lit b extinguishes the property's Freizeitwohnsitz status automatically, by operation of law (erlischt).4 No enforcement action is needed for that to happen, and in a municipality where creation is frozen there is no realistic route to re-creating it.
A substantial modernisation of an older grandfathered chalet, exactly the kind of project many buyers plan on completion, can therefore remove the lawful holiday use that made the property worth buying. What is left is a property usable only as a primary residence, in a market where that is not what the buyer paid for.
A second, quieter route to the same outcome sits alongside it. Under §16 Abs 1 lit a, an owner can extinguish the status voluntarily and irrevocably by written declaration to the mayor. Nothing ambiguous should be signed with a municipality without an Austrian lawyer reading it first.
A personal exception permit (Ausnahmebewilligung) offers a limited route back, and it is broader than the single heir's carve-out it is commonly described as. TROG 2022 §13 Abs 8 sets out four separate grounds on which such a permit can be granted, and only the first belongs to an heir.1
Under lit a, an heir or legatee may apply on the death of the previous owner, provided they meet the criteria in TGVG 1996 §5 lit a and the residence serves no other person's housing need. Two further grounds, lit b and lit c, cover gifts that take effect on the donor's death where the recipient is within the circle of statutory heirs and additional conditions are met. The fourth, lit d, is the owner's own route: it applies where changed life circumstances, in particular professional or family changes, make any other use of the property unreasonable for them.
Which ground fits a particular set of facts is a question for an Austrian lawyer, and any permit has to be applied for: it does not pass automatically with the property. Take advice on the individual estate or circumstances before relying on any of the four.
A permit also carries a hard restriction with it. Under §13 Abs 9, the holder may use the residence only for themselves, their family and their guests, and letting it for payment is prohibited.1 An inherited property held under a permit therefore cannot be put into commercial holiday letting to help carry its running costs.
The Arbeitswohnsitz Myth: Why "Working From the Chalet" No Longer Works
One workaround still circulates among buyers, and it has a specific origin. In a decision dated 17 December 2002, the German actress Uschi Glas persuaded the Landes-Grundverkehrskommission, the provincial land-transfer commission, that her Kitzbühel apartment was a legitimate Arbeitswohnsitz (work residence) used to study scripts and prepare for roles, rather than a restricted Freizeitwohnsitz.5
That decision came from a provincial commission, not from Austria's Supreme Administrative Court, but it was widely cited afterwards as a template. As the Tyrolean press reported it, the commission accepted that a property serving the owner's work was not a leisure residence.5
The route has since been closed. In a decision dated 19 May 2023, Ra 2022/06/0076, the Verwaltungsgerichtshof (VwGH), Austria's Supreme Administrative Court, held that even predominantly professional or work use does not exempt a property from Freizeitwohnsitz classification where the owner's actual centre of life, meaning family and social ties, remains elsewhere.6 The court's own reasoning records that Tyrolean planning law does not recognise "Arbeitswohnsitz" as a category at all.
An earlier VwGH decision of 12 July 2022, Ra 2022/06/0094, is to related effect on registration: recording a property as a Hauptwohnsitz carries evidential weight only and gives no conclusive protection against a Freizeitwohnsitz finding.6
For a buyer, the practical point is that remote working from an Austrian chalet is unlikely to convert a restricted property into a permitted one. It should not be treated as a compliance strategy, and any specific arrangement is worth putting to an Austrian lawyer before you rely on it.
Tyrol Penalties: Two Distinct Routes, Not One Rule
Two different Tyrolean laws punish second-home breaches, and they cover different fact patterns. Both have carried the same €80,000 ceiling since 1 March 2025, each under its own act, which makes them easy to describe as a single rule. They are not one rule, and any penalty figure is only meaningful once you know which law it sits under.
| Statute | What it covers | Maximum penalty |
|---|---|---|
| Tiroler Grundverkehrsgesetz 1996 (TGVG 1996) §36 Abs 1 lit c | Using, or allowing another to use, a building or flat as a Freizeitwohnsitz where the property is subject to the land-transfer declaration duty under TGVG 1996 §14a Abs 1. This is a Grundverkehr-side declaration breach. | Up to €80,0007 |
| TROG 2022 §13a Abs 3, for offences under Abs 1 | Unlawful use, or continued use, of a property whose Freizeitwohnsitz status has been extinguished, or letting a property held under an exception permit to someone outside the permitted group. This is a planning-law misuse breach. | Up to €80,0008 |
| TROG 2022 §13a Abs 3, for offences under Abs 2 | Giving the authority false or incomplete information, or failing to give required information at all. A separate and much lower band, not a variant of the €80,000 offences above. | Up to €6,0008 |
The two €80,000 routes do not stack. TGVG 1996 §36 Abs 1 lit c expressly does not apply where the same act is instead an offence under TROG 2022 §13a Abs 1 lit a or b, so for a given set of facts the routes are mutually exclusive rather than cumulative.7 Fines under the Grundverkehr route are imposed by the district administrative authority (Bezirksverwaltungsbehörde).
Those fines are what the two acts themselves provide for: neither sets out a forced restoration of the building or a forced sale of the property. Any exposure beyond the fine would have to come from another body of law, which is a question for your own Austrian lawyer on the specific facts.
Which route applies to a particular set of facts is for the authority handling it to decide, and a table cannot settle that question. Take Austrian legal advice on the specific property before drawing conclusions about exposure.
Tyrol Enforcement: How Municipalities Check Real Use
Tyrolean mayors act as first-instance building authorities, and enforcement has intensified. The methods reported by practitioners and provincial press are indirect: they look past the paperwork to whether a declared primary residence is genuinely lived in.
Utility consumption is the most commonly cited signal. Unusually low electricity or water use at a property declared as a Hauptwohnsitz has been used as evidence of vacancy in administrative and court proceedings.
Other checks reported in the same sources include cross-referencing the Central Register of Residents (Zentrales Melderegister, ZMR) against family members registered elsewhere, the presence or absence of an Austrian vehicle registration, whether the owner holds an Austrian mobile or landline contract, whether a claimed business is registered entirely abroad, and monitoring of short-let platforms for properties registered as non-commercial.
Treat that as illustrative colour: the list is neither official nor exhaustive. No single signal appears to be determinative on its own, and the evidential weight of any one of them is case-specific.
Two 2019 decisions reported by the Tiroler Tageszeitung show the checks producing outcomes. The paper's account of the first has a Dutch national using a Zillertal apartment as a holiday home since 2008, including lending it to friends, and being found out when an acquaintance staying there during a routine check said she used the flat three or four times a year. On that report, the court treated the use as intentional but reduced the fine to €3,000.9
The same report describes a second case, in which a couple who had registered a Nebenwohnsitz in Tyrol were absent at every one of repeated spot checks over 18 months and the full €4,000 fine was confirmed. The detail in both comes from press coverage rather than from published court files. Both decisions predate the March 2025 increase, so the Tyrolean ceiling then stood at €40,000 on either route, half of today's figure.
Once a municipality opens proceedings, the evidential burden lands on the owner. TROG 2022 §13a Abs 5 obliges the owner, or whoever else has control of the dwelling, to produce evidence of how it has been used on the authority's written request, within a reasonable deadline the authority sets.8 Austrian practitioners call the effect Beweislastumkehr, a reversal of the burden of proof.
A 2024 case note from an Innsbruck real-estate law practice records how one such dispute ended. A property bought in 2010 carried a right of use for the owners' German-based parents, and the family argued that it had become a genuine Hauptwohnsitz once the parents retired.
The Landesverwaltungsgericht Tirol, the provincial administrative court, found unlawful Freizeitwohnsitz use under TROG 2022 §13a Abs 1 lit a anyway, because the rights-holders could not sufficiently prove that their centre of life had moved to Austria. The fine was €4,000. No court file number is published with the note, so treat it as a practitioner's account of the decision.10
Salzburg: The 16% Threshold and the Five-Year Rolling Reassessment
Salzburg restricts second homes too, but the machinery is genuinely different from Tyrol's. The governing law is the Salzburger Raumordnungsgesetz 2009 (S-ROG 2009), Salzburg's spatial planning act, and the relevant provision is §31 Abs 1 Z 1.
Under it, use of a dwelling as a Zweitwohnung is restricted by planning law in any municipality where the share of dwellings not used as a Hauptwohnsitz exceeds 16% of that municipality's housing stock.11 Municipalities over the line are designated Zweitwohnung-Beschränkungsgemeinden, restricted municipalities.
The measurement is a rolling one. The provincial government (Landesregierung) reassesses every five years, using the arithmetic mean of the non-primary-residence share measured each 31 October across the preceding five years.11 A municipality may also apply to have its own threshold raised where that does not conflict with wider structural development goals.
A second, separate mechanism sits beside it. Under §31 Abs 1 Z 2, a municipality below the 16% threshold may voluntarily zone part or all of its territory as a Zweitwohnung-Beschränkungsgebiet, a restriction area, through its zoning plan. That is how Salzburg City restricts second homes across its whole territory despite sitting below the province-wide threshold.
The official Land Salzburg list, dated 15 August 2025, records 91 Zweitwohnung-Beschränkungsgemeinden out of Salzburg's 119 municipalities. It also records nine Zweitwohnung-Beschränkungsgebiete separately, restriction areas declared by a municipality through its own zoning plan rather than reached by crossing the threshold, among them Salzburg City, Hallein, Mittersill and Neukirchen am Großvenediger.12 Read the list as a dated snapshot: the underlying threshold is reassessed on the five-year cycle above, and the list has already been amended upwards since it was first published.
The ski-resort coverage is close to complete. In the Pinzgau district the restricted municipalities include Zell am See, Kaprun, Saalbach, Saalfelden, Leogang, Maria Alm am Steinernen Meer, Rauris and Krimml. In Pongau they include Bad Gastein, Bad Hofgastein, Flachau, Wagrain, Altenmarkt im Pongau, Radstadt, Großarl and Filzmoos.
Salzburg's Grandfathering History: Two Declaration Regimes and a Court Ruling
Salzburg's recent history is worth knowing before you rely on any property's current status. The rules governing declared second homes have been rewritten twice in four years, and a constitutional court ruling in between took protection away from owners who already had it.
A buyer in a restricted municipality could declare an intention not to establish a second home there. It was a statement of intent with no effective verification behind it, and the practice that grew up around it was dubbed "grauer Grundverkehr", grey or informal land traffic, by authorities and press.
The Verfassungsgerichtshof (VfGH), Austria's Constitutional Court, struck down parts of the 2019 legalisation rule in decision G 366/2021, handed down on 30 June 2022. The case number records the year the case was filed; the ruling itself is dated 2022. Roughly 1,500 previously declared second homes lost that protection and fell back under the restriction.13
The Salzburger Grundverkehrsgesetz 2023, the province's new land-transfer act, was passed on 9 November 2022, published at LGBl 95/2022 and took effect on 1 March 2023 alongside a matching amendment to S-ROG §31. It replaced the declaration of intent with a positive one, which practitioners call the Positiverklärung, though neither act uses that word. A buyer in a restricted municipality must now actively declare and evidence an intention to establish a genuine Hauptwohnsitz, and the act attaches deadlines for taking that use up, running from one year as the default for already-built land out to five or seven years depending on the facts.13
Non-compliance with those land-transfer deadlines carries real consequences, up to and including forced sale (Zwangsversteigerung) in the worst cases.13 Separate from that regime, unlawful second-home use is an offence under the planning act, and S-ROG 2009 §78 bands those fines by offence class.
Using a dwelling as a Zweitwohnung contrary to §31 Abs 2, or knowingly letting someone else do so, is the offence at §78 Abs 1 Z 3 and carries a fine of up to €50,000 under §78 Abs 2 Z 3, as does unlawful tourist letting contrary to §31b.14 Unauthorised building work, or advertising a dwelling for tourist accommodation to a wider audience, sits in a €25,000 band. Minor and procedural breaches cap at €5,000.
The €50,000 figure is therefore specific to unlawful second-home use and unlawful tourist letting, not a general ceiling for every §78 offence. Which band a given set of facts falls into is for the authority to decide, so have your Austrian lawyer confirm the current exposure for the property in question.
For a buyer, the direction of travel matters more than the exact fine. A property's second-home status in Salzburg is not a permanent guarantee: around 1,500 owners found that out in 2022, and the replacement regime is stricter than the one it removed.
The Other Provinces: Zoning Designation and Annual Levies
The remaining provinces work differently again. Vorarlberg, Carinthia and Styria gate lawful holiday use through zoning rather than a province-wide percentage threshold, while Lower Austria has no second-home restriction regime at all.
All three of the first group have provincial acts empowering their municipalities to charge an annual levy on second homes, though each province defines the taxable dwelling in its own terms. The province authorises the levy; the municipality decides whether to charge it, so whether one is payable on a given property turns on local adoption, the property's own facts and the statutory exemptions.
| Province | Restriction mechanism | Annual levy, where the municipality charges one | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vorarlberg | No numeric cap. The general rule under §16a of the Vorarlberger Raumplanungsgesetz (RPG) is that a Ferienwohnung (holiday flat) needs an explicit zoning designation (Widmung) before it can lawfully be used that way. Alongside it, §16a Abs 3 provides three fact-specific permit (Bescheid) routes: one for an heir of a deceased owner, one tied to a licensed hospitality business and capped at 10% of the commercial floor area, and one for mountain-pasture huts (Maisäß, Vorsäß, Alpgebäude).15 | Zweitwohnungsabgabe, set by municipal category rather than a single flat rate and indexed each year. Published figures put the 2026 top-category maximum at roughly €3,300 a year; ask the municipality for the rate that applies to the property.16 | St Anton am Arlberg is in Tyrol and falls under TROG 2022; Lech am Arlberg, in the same Arlberg ski area, is in Vorarlberg and falls under the RPG. Establish which basis a flat actually relies on, a Widmung or one of the §16a Abs 3 permits. |
| Carinthia | No numeric cap. Kärntner Raumordnungsgesetz 2021 (K-ROG 2021) §30 requires a special-use zoning designation (Sonderwidmung) before lawful use as a Freizeitwohnsitz, or as part of an Apartmenthaus, a building of more than three units used predominantly for non-permanent housing. | Kärntner Zweitwohnungsabgabegesetz 2027 (K-ZWAG 2027), which takes effect on 1 January 2027 and replaces the 2005 act of a similar name. Its §8 ceilings run at €24 a month for units up to 30 m², €47 above 30 m² to 60 m², €83 above 60 m² to 90 m² and €130 from 90 m². Those figures are statutory maxima, and each municipality sets its own rate beneath them, so the charge on a given property may be lower.17 | From 2027 a dwelling will count as a Zweitwohnung where the ZMR records no Hauptwohnsitz registration against it for more than twelve weeks in total across the assessment period, so the charge turns on how the property is used and registered. §3 exempts fourteen classes of dwelling, among them commercial letting, agricultural and hunting use, probate estates and periods of renovation, but none of them covers an ordinary leisure second home. |
| Styria | Steiermärkisches Raumordnungsgesetz 2010 (StROG 2010) §30 Abs 1 Z 10 lets a municipality zone Zweitwohnsitzgebiete (second-home areas), with the ratio of second homes to primary homes to stay under 0.5 as a target and never above 1.0. A municipality designated a Vorbehaltsgemeinde under Styria's own land-transfer act, a different designation from Tyrol's planning-law one of the same name, may also declare a Beschränkungszone under §30 Abs 2, in which no new second homes may be created at all.18 | Steiermärkisches Zweitwohnsitz- und Wohnungsleerstandsabgabegesetz (StZWAG) §7, capping the second-home levy at €1,000 a year for a 100 m² dwelling, roughly €10 per m² a year19 | The levy attaches under §3 to any dwelling not used as a Hauptwohnsitz, with no time-based test. A separate vacancy levy under §8 catches dwellings carrying no residence registration at all, primary or secondary, for more than 26 weeks a year, assessed against the ZMR. Schladming applies the maximum second-home rate. |
| Lower Austria | No second-home restriction regime. When land is first zoned as building land, the municipality may impose a building deadline (Bebauungsfrist) of up to seven years under the Niederösterreichisches Raumordnungsgesetz 2014 (NÖ ROG 2014) §17. It is discretionary rather than automatic, the council can extend it once by up to three years at the owner's request, and land that misses it reverts to a follow-on designation: either the zoning it held before or another green-land or traffic-area category.20 | None | A land-mobilisation measure with no second-home purpose. |
Styria reverses the burden of proof as well. StROG 2010 §30 Abs 3 puts it on the applicant for a building permit to show that a project is not a second home, and on the owner in building-police proceedings to show that no unlawful second-home use is taking place.18 Tyrol reaches a comparable effect through the owner's duty under TROG 2022 §13a Abs 5 to produce evidence of use, but Styria places the burden itself on the applicant and owner from the outset.
The shared terminology is a trap for anyone reading across provinces. Styria's Vorbehaltsgemeinde is a designation under the Steiermärkisches Grundverkehrsgesetz, the province's land-transfer act, and not the planning-law designation of the same name that Tyrol applies under TROG 2022. The German term is identical, but the statutory basis is not.
The levies matter less than the zoning rules, but where a municipality charges one it is a real annual carrying cost, and it sits on top of the ordinary ongoing taxes of overseas ownership.
What This Means for Resort and Property Choice
The statutes translate directly into what is realistically buyable. Tyrol's premier resorts are almost all designated Vorbehaltsgemeinden, so new Freizeitwohnsitz creation is frozen there and buyers compete for a fixed pool of grandfathered resale properties.
Scarcity of that kind usually shows up in price, and lawful leisure-use status is likely to command a premium over otherwise-comparable stock without it. Ask your agent for recent comparable sales with and without the status rather than working to an assumed uplift.
In the 91 Salzburg municipalities restricted on the August 2025 list, the same dynamic applies through a different mechanism. The threshold moves on a periodic reassessment, but for a buyer looking at Zell am See, Saalbach or Bad Gastein today the practical effect on available stock is comparable.
The more realistic route is often a less prominent address. A municipality that sits below the relevant threshold, and has not zoned a restriction area of its own, can offer a genuine path to a lawful holiday home.
Salzburg's partial-area designations are easy to misread as a softer version of the same thing. Mittersill and Neukirchen am Großvenediger appear on the official list as Beschränkungsgebiete rather than as restricted municipalities, but that describes how much of the municipal territory the restriction covers, not how hard it bites.
A property inside the mapped area carries the full acquisition and use controls. What decides the position is where the parcel sits in relation to the mapped boundary, so have the individual plot checked against the municipality's zoning plan before you treat a partial designation as an opening.
None of that is a substitute for checking the individual property. A municipality's overall status tells you the odds; the answer for the flat you are looking at comes from its own register entry, zoning and permit history.
Due Diligence: What to Check Before You Make an Offer
The Austria-specific work here is verifying a property's use category. Due Diligence Before Buying Ski Property covers the generic survey and title mechanics that apply in any market, and The Austrian Ski Property Purchase Process: Offer to Ownership sets out where this check falls in the transaction sequence.
The Grundbuch extract establishes ownership, encumbrances and any annotations registered against the property. Ask your lawyer to read it against the use category you have been told the property carries.
The Flächenwidmungsplan extract shows how the land is zoned. In Vorarlberg and Carinthia in particular, lawful holiday use depends on a specific designation appearing here. In Salzburg, ask separately whether the parcel falls inside a mapped Zweitwohnung-Beschränkungsgebiet, which is drawn on the plan rather than applied to the whole municipality.
The Benützungsbewilligung records what the building was permitted to be used for. In Tyrol, ask as well whether a declaration extinguishing Freizeitwohnsitz status under TROG 2022 §16 Abs 1 lit a has ever been made to the mayor, and whether permitted works have taken the building past the 25% cap. Discrepancies between the permit and the current use are exactly what enforcement proceedings are built on.
Where the province maintains one, ask for the property's entry on the municipal Freizeitwohnsitz or Zweitwohnsitz register, and for the document that entry rests on: the Feststellung determining the use lawful, the Baubewilligung, or an Ausnahmebewilligung under §13 Abs 8. In Tyrol this is the §14 register that the 8% cap is measured against.
Ask for formal written confirmation of the property's lawful leisure-use status from the municipality, and make your offer conditional on receiving it. An agent's or seller's verbal assurance carries no weight in a later dispute.
A Meldezettel offers no help at that point. Registering a secondary address is a routine administrative act that planning authorities do not check at the point of registration, so it gives no protection where the zoning does not permit holiday use.
It can also cut against you. Where the underlying use is later found unlawful, a registration recorded in the owner's name can be read as evidence of what the property was actually being used for.
Important
This article is for general information and does not replace professional advice. SnowOnly can help you find the right specialist.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I inherit an Austrian ski property and use it as a second home?
In Tyrol, TROG 2022 §13 Abs 8 allows a personal exception permit (Ausnahmebewilligung). An heir or legatee may apply on the death of the previous owner, provided the statutory conditions are met and the residence serves no other person's housing need, and the permit is granted on application rather than passing automatically with the estate. Under §13 Abs 9 the holder may then use the property only for themselves, their family and their guests, with letting for payment prohibited, so take Austrian legal advice on the individual estate before assuming the exception applies.
What happens if I renovate a grandfathered Freizeitwohnsitz?
Tyrol caps any rebuild or extension at 25% growth in either building volume or habitable floor area against the originally lawful structure, under TROG 2022 §15 Abs 2 and 3. If a building permit is granted for works exceeding that, §16 Abs 1 lit b extinguishes the property's Freizeitwohnsitz status automatically. Have the plans checked against the cap before you commission the work.
Are second-home restrictions the same in every Austrian province?
No. Tyrol bars new holiday-home creation on any of three separate planning-law grounds, one of which is an 8% cap on a municipality's housing stock, while Salzburg runs a 16% threshold reassessed on a rolling five-year average. Vorarlberg, Carinthia and Styria gate lawful use through zoning designation instead, and Lower Austria has no second-home regime at all. Each of those first three provinces also has legislation letting its municipalities charge an annual levy on second homes, defined differently in each province, and whether one is payable on a given property depends on local adoption and the statutory exemptions.
Does a Meldezettel registration let me use a property as a holiday home?
No. Registering a secondary address is a reporting duty under the Meldegesetz, Austria's registration act, administered separately from planning law, and it confers no permission to use the property for holidays. Nor does it protect you: lawful holiday use depends on the property's zoning and its register entry, and authorities cross-check registration records against property and consumption data when they investigate actual use.
Will today's second-home restrictions stay the same?
They are unlikely to. The Constitutional Court's decision of 30 June 2022 stripped around 1,500 previously declared Salzburg second homes of their protection, and the restricted-municipality list is reassessed periodically, with 91 of 119 municipalities, plus nine separate restriction areas, recorded on the list dated 15 August 2025. Treat any current status as a dated snapshot and re-confirm it before you rely on it.
Next Steps
The annual second-home levies covered above are one part of a wider ongoing cost picture. Tax Basics for Overseas Ski Property Owners sets out the recurring taxes and reporting obligations that come with owning property abroad.
If you have moved from asking whether a property is lawfully usable to asking how the purchase itself works, How to Buy Ski Property: The 5 Step Guide covers the cross-market process from search to completion.
Need Expert Support?
Confirming whether a specific Austrian property carries lawful leisure-use status, and whether it can keep it, is exactly what SnowOnly+ coordinates: vetted legal advisers alongside mortgage, currency and tax specialists, in one place.
Explore SnowOnly+Sources
1. Tiroler Raumordnungsgesetz 2022, §13: the statutory definition of a Freizeitwohnsitz at Abs 1, the two qualifying routes at Abs 3, the three grounds barring further creation at Abs 5 including the 8 per cent ("8 v. H.") cap measured against the §14 register and the most recent building-and-housing census, the four exception-permit grounds at Abs 8, and the restriction on use and the ban on letting for payment at Abs 9. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), consolidated text retrieved 22 July 2026.
2. Tiroler Grundverkehrsgesetz 1996, §14, the power to designate a municipality a Vorbehaltsgemeinde by ordinance: mandatory at Abs 2 lit b where the 8 per cent Freizeitwohnsitz share is exceeded, and discretionary at Abs 1 on general housing-market criteria with no reference to that share, with review at least every three years under Abs 5. See also the Vorbehaltsgemeindenverordnung 2026, ordinance of the Tyrolean provincial government of 23 December 2025, published at LGBl 100/2025 on 30 December 2025 and effective 1 January 2026, listing the 181 Vorbehaltsgemeinden. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), retrieved 22 July 2026.
3. Land Tirol, Freizeitwohnsitzverzeichnis, the official register of Freizeitwohnsitze compiled under TROG 2022 §14 Abs 4 from mayors' returns, table "Freizeitwohnsitze nach der Rechtsgrundlage gemäß TROG 2022", current at 28 May 2026: Kitzbühel 1,274 of 7,681 dwellings (16.4%), St Anton am Arlberg 368 of 1,911 (19.3%), Brixen im Thale 293 of 1,979 (14.8%) and Sölden 10 of 2,013 (0.5%), dwelling counts taken from the 2021 building-and-housing census. Retrieved 22 July 2026.
4. Tiroler Raumordnungsgesetz 2022, §15, the 25 per cent ("25 v. H.") cap on rebuilding or extending a grandfathered Freizeitwohnsitz, measured in Baumasse or Wohnnutzfläche. See also §16 for automatic extinguishment where the cap is exceeded and for voluntary extinguishment by declaration to the mayor. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), consolidated text retrieved 22 July 2026.
5. Tiroler Tageszeitung, archive coverage of the 2002 Landes-Grundverkehrskommission decision on Uschi Glas's Kitzbühel apartment and of the later closure of the Arbeitswohnsitz route. The article carries no publication date on the page; retrieved 22 July 2026.
6. Verwaltungsgerichtshof (VwGH), Ra 2022/06/0076, decision of 19 May 2023, decided jointly with Ra 2022/06/0077, holding that Tyrolean planning law does not recognise the concept of an "Arbeitswohnsitz" and that professional use does not exclude Freizeitwohnsitz classification. See also Ra 2022/06/0094, decision of 12 July 2022, on the evidential weight of a Hauptwohnsitz registration. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), Judikatur, both retrieved 22 July 2026.
7. Tiroler Grundverkehrsgesetz 1996, §36, administrative offences under the land-transfer regime, including the §36 Abs 1 lit c offence carrying a fine of up to €80,000 and its express carve-out where the act is instead an offence under TROG 2022 §13a Abs 1 lit a or b. The ceiling on this route rose from €40,000 to €80,000 with effect from 1 March 2025, under Tyrol's LGBl 6/2025. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), consolidated text retrieved 22 July 2026.
8. Tiroler Raumordnungsgesetz 2022, §13a, planning-law offences: the unlawful-use offence at Abs 1 lit a, fines of up to €80,000 for offences under Abs 1 and up to €6,000 for offences under Abs 2, and the owner's duty at Abs 5 to produce evidence of a dwelling's use on the authority's written request. The €80,000 ceiling has applied since 1 March 2025. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), consolidated text retrieved 22 July 2026.
9. Tiroler Tageszeitung, "Behörden greifen durch: 4000 Euro Strafe für illegalen Wohnsitz", 24 October 2019, reporting two Landesverwaltungsgericht Tirol decisions, the Zillertal holiday-flat case reduced to €3,000 and the spot-check case confirmed at €4,000.
10. law-experts.at, Innsbruck real-estate law practice, case note on a 2024 Landesverwaltungsgericht Tirol decision finding unlawful Freizeitwohnsitz use under TROG 2022 §13a Abs 1 lit a with a €4,000 fine. No court file number is published with the note.
11. Salzburger Raumordnungsgesetz 2009, §31, the 16 per cent threshold for a Zweitwohnung-Beschränkungsgemeinde, the five-year reassessment on the arithmetic mean of the share measured each 31 October, and the separate restriction-area mechanism at Abs 1 Z 2. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), consolidated text retrieved 22 July 2026.
12. Land Salzburg, "Übersicht über die Zweitwohnung-Beschränkungsgemeinden und Zweitwohnung-Beschränkungsgebiete", official list dated 15 August 2025, the source for 91 restricted municipalities out of 119 and for the separately listed restriction areas.
13. Verfassungsgerichtshof (VfGH), G 366/2021, decision of 30 June 2022, whose header reads "G 366/2021-9 / 30. Juni 2022": the case number records the 2021 filing, the ruling itself is dated 2022. See also the Salzburger Grundverkehrsgesetz 2023 (S.GVG 2023), the act of 9 November 2022 published at LGBl 95/2022 and in force from 1 March 2023, whose §§15 to 17 and §25 carry the declaration and evidence duties and the deadlines for taking up the declared use; the term "Positiverklärung" appears in neither that act nor S-ROG §31 and is practitioner shorthand for the mechanism. On the 2019 Negativerklärung, the roughly 1,500 affected owners and the forced-sale consequence, see Brandauer Rechtsanwälte, Salzburg real-estate law practice, article of 2 May 2026. All retrieved 22 July 2026.
14. Salzburger Raumordnungsgesetz 2009, §78, administrative penalties: up to €50,000 under Abs 2 Z 3 for using or knowingly allowing use of a dwelling as a Zweitwohnung contrary to §31 Abs 2 and for tourist letting contrary to §31b, up to €25,000 under Abs 2 Z 2, and up to €5,000 under Abs 2 Z 1. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), consolidated text retrieved 22 July 2026.
15. Vorarlberger Raumplanungsgesetz, §16a: the zoning designation (Widmung) requirement for Ferienwohnungen at Abs 1 and 2, and the three fact-specific permit routes at Abs 3, covering an heir of a deceased owner, a holiday flat attached to a licensed Beherbergungsbetrieb and limited to 10 per cent of the commercial floor area, and Maisäß, Vorsäß and Alpgebäude mountain-pasture buildings. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), consolidated text retrieved 22 July 2026.
16. Vorarlberg Zweitwohnungsabgabe: the levy is charged by municipal category, keyed to overnight stays per resident, with per-square-metre rates and per-unit ceilings that are indexed annually, so no single flat figure holds across the province or across years. Secondary reporting of the provincial rates puts the top-category maximum for 2026 at approximately €3,341 a year. An earlier maximum of €2,775 a year, reported by VOL.AT, reflects an earlier indexation year. The rate applicable to a specific property is set and published by its municipality. Retrieved 22 July 2026.
17. Kärntner Zweitwohnungsabgabegesetz 2027 (K-ZWAG 2027), enacted as Article II of Landesgesetzblatt für Kärnten Nr. 40/2026, RIS Gesetzesnummer 20001047, in force from 1 January 2027; it replaces the former Kärntner Zweitwohnsitzabgabegesetz (K-ZWAG), LGBl 84/2005, RIS Gesetzesnummer 20000191, which §12 Abs 4 repeals on the same date. §2 defines a Zweitwohnung as a dwelling for which, in total, no Hauptwohnsitz registration appears in the Zentrales Melderegister for more than twelve weeks in the assessment period; §3 lists the fourteen exemptions; §8 Abs 1 sets the monthly ceilings of €24, €47, €83 and €130 by usable-floor-area band and requires the municipal council to set its own rate within them; §8 Abs 2 indexes those ceilings to the consumer price index annually from 2028, so the figures are the 2027 values; §8 Abs 4 reduces the charge by 25 per cent where a flat-rate Aufenthaltsabgabe is also paid on the same unit; §12 Abs 1 sets commencement at 1 January 2027. See also the consolidated text of the new act. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), both retrieved 22 July 2026.
18. Steiermärkisches Raumordnungsgesetz 2010, §30, the Zweitwohnsitzgebiet designation and its 0.5 and 1.0 ratio limits at Abs 1 Z 10, the Beschränkungszone für Zweitwohnsitze at Abs 2, and the burden of proof on the building applicant and owner at Abs 3. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), consolidated text retrieved 22 July 2026.
19. Steiermärkisches Zweitwohnsitz- und Wohnungsleerstandsabgabegesetz (StZWAG), which governs two separate levies: §3 makes the Zweitwohnsitzabgabe attach to any dwelling not used as a Hauptwohnsitz, with no time-based test, and §7 caps it at €1,000 in a calendar year for a dwelling of 100 m² usable floor area; §8 is the subject provision of the separate Wohnungsleerstandsabgabe, which applies where neither a Hauptwohnsitz nor any other residence registration exists for more than 26 calendar weeks in the year. §17 is a transitional provision only. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), consolidated text retrieved 22 July 2026.
20. Niederösterreichisches Raumordnungsgesetz 2014, §17, Abs 2: on first designating land as Bauland a municipality may set a Bebauungsfrist of no more than seven years; the council may grant a single extension of up to three years at the landowner's request; and where the deadline lapses the land takes a Folgewidmung, being either its pre-designation zoning or, where conditions allow, another Grünland or traffic-area category. Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), consolidated text retrieved 22 July 2026.
